Chiko

Impressive directorial skills, if a trite plotline, are on offer in Turkish-German writer-director Özgür Yildirim’s occasionally violent debut feature from from Fatih Akin’s production company Corazón. Denis Moschitto makes for a charismatic, watchable  and surprisingly sympathetic presence  as Chiko, a young Hamburg hoodlum and drug-dealer coping with his physically and emotionally volatile friend and business partner Tibet (Volkan Özcan), his separated family and the demands of bigshot Brownie (Moritz Bleibtreu) – into whose empire the young Turk aggressively inveigles himself.

The narrative hanger is a clichéd immigrant rags-to-riches tale replete with standard-issue accoutrements – from the hero’s uncriticised materialist ambitions to his romanticised relationship with an attractive prostitute (Reyhan Sahin).

But the story is dressed in divertingly realist clothing, ranging from cinematographer Matthias Bolliger’s accurate rendering of the film’s Turkish-immigrant milieu to the mainly laudable attempt of the script (inspired by gangster  Jacques Mesrine’s autobiography  ‘Instinct of Death’) to render the contradictory pulls of individualism and familial and fraternal loyalty in psychologically credible terms, and the committed performances of the cast.